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Sometimes I stare, sometimes it's me
I had someone at the wedding I attended tonight compare me to the eponymous protagonist of Good Will Hunting (1997). She's like that scene, "I read your book last night." Nine hundred pages, she read it last night. Boom-boom-boom. It's incredible. I feel totally inadequate, talking to you. I'm serious. I feel about this big . . . This was the brother-in-law of the bride, a registered nurse whom I had met last year at his own wedding, introducing me to another friend of his. I didn't remember that he'd seen me reading. But I show up most places with a book—to this wedding, it was David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo; to dinner last night, Patricia McKillip's The Changeling Sea; Jaco Van Dormael's The Eighth Day & Toto the Hero to a doctor's appointment the day before—so it was nothing remarkable, particularly since my eventual reaction to two hundred wedding guests attempting to hold each their own conversation at escalating volume in a crowded ballroom is to stuff Kleenex in my ears and read whatever I happen to have brought with me. I do not recharge from the company of other people. I have always read in blocks and paragraphs and pages, not line-by-line. He wasn't making fun of me.
I never feel like Will Hunting. I feel like the professor, who has won the Fields Medal and this means only that he is good enough to recognize the greatness he does not possess. And when it comes to that, it's only—it's just a handful of people in the world who can tell the difference between you and me. But I'm one of them. Or envious Salieri, if you believe Pushkin and Peter Shaffer; though God is nowhere in it for me. Grazie, Signore! It is to the credit of intelligent people, my father repeats, that they are aware of the limits of their own intelligence and constantly frustrated by them. Only idiots think they know it all. This statement is usually accompanied with a story about television. And I take comfort, if that is the right word, in the fact that the universe is a far stranger place than I will probably ever wrap my head around: to learn that it was after all as neat and orderly as Dante's circles of hell and wheeling paradise, a creationist's magnificent clockwork with not a cog or a counterweight out of place, would depress me beyond words. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. But off the cosmic scale, I pull the strings of a smile and tell the nurse, yeah, so what? I'd be useless in an emergency room. That which I can do, I dismiss. I revere what is outside my scope. It is very unhelpful.
It is not always true, either. But it is tonight. I'm on my knees staring at a half-burned paper and I don't wish I didn't know that the instrument of God is somewhere out there, playing: I wish I believed that occasionally it was me.
I never feel like Will Hunting. I feel like the professor, who has won the Fields Medal and this means only that he is good enough to recognize the greatness he does not possess. And when it comes to that, it's only—it's just a handful of people in the world who can tell the difference between you and me. But I'm one of them. Or envious Salieri, if you believe Pushkin and Peter Shaffer; though God is nowhere in it for me. Grazie, Signore! It is to the credit of intelligent people, my father repeats, that they are aware of the limits of their own intelligence and constantly frustrated by them. Only idiots think they know it all. This statement is usually accompanied with a story about television. And I take comfort, if that is the right word, in the fact that the universe is a far stranger place than I will probably ever wrap my head around: to learn that it was after all as neat and orderly as Dante's circles of hell and wheeling paradise, a creationist's magnificent clockwork with not a cog or a counterweight out of place, would depress me beyond words. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. But off the cosmic scale, I pull the strings of a smile and tell the nurse, yeah, so what? I'd be useless in an emergency room. That which I can do, I dismiss. I revere what is outside my scope. It is very unhelpful.
It is not always true, either. But it is tonight. I'm on my knees staring at a half-burned paper and I don't wish I didn't know that the instrument of God is somewhere out there, playing: I wish I believed that occasionally it was me.
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Me too. Anywhere I might have to wait in line, and especially to parties. Of course, you and everyone else still read faster than me . . .
particularly since my eventual reaction to two hundred wedding guests attempting to hold each their own conversation at escalating volume in a crowded ballroom is to stuff Kleenex in my ears and read whatever I happen to have brought with me.
The thing I hate most about parties is how everyone has to talk even when they have nothing to say.
Only idiots think they know it all. This statement is usually accompanied with a story about television.
Heh. We're looking at you, Bill O'Reilly. "Only the shallow know themselves," as Oscar Wilde put it.
a creationist's magnificent clockwork with not a cog or a counterweight out of place, would depress me beyond words.
Yeah. But that's because you haven't been trying to kill your brain all your life.
I don't wish I didn't know that the instrument of God is somewhere out there, playing: I wish I believed that occasionally it was me.
I know how you feel. But I must say that, for me, it very often is you.
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No really, I think like this. I'm strange, I know.
And while not directly on point, I've always felt that this is important to remember:
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/memberimages/080906case_snapped_open.jpg
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And quite honestly, you don't HAVE many intellectual equals, you dope. The ones accounted for on this seaboard are generally already in your acquaintance.
I'm going to smack you.
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Why must I sing this song
who cannot sing?
Why must the spirit soar
that has no wing?
Why must the clod feel fire?
Who portions out desire?
Who hears the perfect chord
played on the faulty lyre?
...
Of course what
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Within my field of talents. I wish I were more of a polymath, but it doesn't chew on my heart at night that I'm unable to do Nobel-level physics research; I am not striving to be a potter when my gifts are for weaving (or blacksmithing, or chivalric registers of language at points in the narrative when no one cares). It's the things I can do and care about doing that I feel I am always falling short at.
No really, I think like this. I'm strange, I know.
. . . Not that strange. Sorry. Try again.
this is important to remember
Heh.
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A friend of mine recently commented on this phenomenon with regard to my health . . .
I'm going to smack you.
Only if I can smack you for producing a similar statement a couple of years ago.
Thanks.
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I have been on a McKillip re-read recently: Stepping from the Shadows, The House on Parchment Street, The Sorceress and the Cygnet, The Cygnet and the Firebird, Ombria in Shadow. It was probably good for me.
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"One should always be a little improbable."
But I must say that, for me, it very often is you.
Thank you . . . The universe is probably composed of interlocking circles of inaccurate self-esteem.
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I suppose this might also be useful to keep in mind. Not the bit about the goatee.
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Who portions out desire?
Who hears the perfect chord
played on the faulty lyre?
For the record, your grandmother's best friend reminds me slightly of William Blake. That is never mediocre.
Thank you.
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Hmm . . . Yes, I think you're right.
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I'm trying to think of something less inadequate to say than 'I know the feeling.' But... I do.
To me, you seem very often like just such an instrument.
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None. I don't remember not being able to read; as soon as I could, that was how. I assume I inherited it from someone.
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The worst part is, I think there's a livejournal meme like this now going around . . .
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One of my out-of-place reading experiences--my younger daughter took up soccer. This was an entirely new experience for me. I never did any sports myself, my oldest despises sports. I always went past soccer fields staring in dismay and wondering why all these people were mulling about or zigzagging all over, and I thanked god I wasn't part of it. Well, here I was now thrown into it because parents want to take interest in what their kids like to do, and she's the kind of kid who likes art and music as much as climbing, running, jumping, and screaming. So ... I walked on up to the field, Laura ran off to the coach, I opened the chair, and I pulled out my book. People looked. I smiled and went back to reading. The game hadn't started yet; I figured it was okay to read. I figured I could read between plays. Finally, someone said, "A book. I never thought of that." Reading is an anomaly at soccer games. Parents are expected to chat and cheer. Ah well, I don't bring books anymore. I do like watching my daughter's growing skill, the grace of movement sometimes, the efficiency in moving the ball across the field, but I haven't been able to shout, and I only chat if necessary. Day dream? Yes. The entire time.
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This made me smile. Thank you.
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As in a meme about trying to come up with a way of saying "I know the feeling" that's better than "I know the feeling"?
I suspect that every conceivable meme is going around somewhere on LJ right now. As well as at least five inconceivables. ;-)